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The price of freedom is steep, but Russian award-winning filmmaker Aleksander Molochnikov wants to get you inspired by showcasing one woman who bravely paid the price. Molochnikov’s Extremist, backed by Ben Stiller and John Lesher, is a resonant anti-war short that shows what happens when activism collides with an authoritarian regime that suppresses human rights and other freedoms. Inspired by a true story, the short follows Sasha Skochilenko, a Russian artist who was arrested and sentenced to seven years for replacing four price tags in a grocery store with anti-war messages about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Helming this story was somewhat personal for Molochnikov and his film crew, who filmed the Russian-based short in Latvia to avoid arrest. Primed as one of Russia’s skillful young directors, which saw him direct operas, ballets and plays at Moscow’s prized Bolshoi Theatre and Moscow Art Theatre, his career there came to a halt when he publicly criticized the country’s war in Ukraine. After a short stint in jail and amid threats to his safety, he moved from his home city of Saint Petersburg to the U.S. and graduated from Columbia University’s directing program in 2025. Since then, Extremist has premiered at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival, won two BAFTA Student Film Awards and landed a spot on the 2026 Oscars shortlist.
Here, Molochnikov speaks with Deadline about the importance of freedom and standing up to oppression.
DEADLINE: What led you to make Sasha Skochilenko’s jail sentence into a short film?
ALEKSANDR MOLOCHNIKOV: At the time [in 2022], I was trying to launch a TV show that I had been preparing for two years before that. It was something that I had fully written and directed that already had 300 people on board, and we were figuring out if we were going to shoot it or not, but then a war started. Then what Sasha had done was one of the many news articles that I read because every day something would happen and people would get arrested for absurd actions, but, of course, her case already drew attention because it was so artistically beautiful; changing those price tags was so original and a hack of the system. Then, sometime later, I saw that she got sentenced to seven years in prison. I had already lived in the U.S. by this time, but I felt a lot of admiration for her because she did a heroic move, while I ran away [from Russia]. She is my hero.
[Not long after her sentencing] I thought about making a movie. I read more articles about Sasha’s life with her girlfriend, Sonya [Subbotina], and this old lady neighbor who just happened to report the price-tag incidents. She didn’t know that it was related to Sasha; she only reported the price tags because she saw something she thought was hooliganism, but because of her, a young girl is basically losing her life. Then I thought about what choices would set that up for Sasha to admit her guilt or not, and say that yes, [the activism] that she tried to spread is fake when it actually isn’t, or convince her to stick to her beliefs and for the old lady to take back what she complained about when she realized what she was actually doing. I thought that would be very interesting for a short.
DEADLINE: Talk about your collaboration with Sasha to make this movie.
MOLOCHNIKOV: Sasha was in prison, and her girlfriend was in St. Petersburg, so I communicated with her that way through Sonya and sent her the first draft of the script. Sonya passed the script to prison lawyers so that Sasha could read it. It took a while, but they came back and said, “It’s not exactly the reality, but it’s probably impossible to recreate that reality.” But because Sasha, Sonya and I are artists, there was a mutual understanding, and so they said to feel free and do my own creativity, but say that it’s inspired by, not trying to recreate the truth step by step, but a story that is inspired by the events.
DEADLINE: Was there fear in covering this topic?
MOLOCHNIKOV: For me personally, there was no fear because I knew I would not come back to Russia. And I couldn’t come back even before shooting this because it was too risky and now the risk of being arrested there is big. So, fear came only in terms of whether or not this would affect her sentence negatively, but, since they were supporting the idea of the film, I thought, why be afraid, because, if they said, “No, we don’t want to do that,” of course, we wouldn’t.
DEADLINE: Outside of the war with Ukraine, there’s a lot of other themes regarding propaganda, anti-LGBTQ sentiments and the freedom of expression. What was the most challenging thing for you?
MOLOCHNIKOV: I was trying to figure out how to fit this story into 17 minutes without it feeling too short or too cut-y. It was a challenge figuring out how to make the short engaging for the audience and make people feel something. I also think about how [dedicated we were to] staying truthful to real events, because we weren’t filming in Russia. We were in Latvia, so we had to recreate Russia there. We were on the phone constantly with many people who were imprisoned in Russia, political activists, and [people] in the LGBTQ community in Russia, because we really tried to understand what they felt. The actors also studied a lot of the real characters in this story and the topic.
What helped a lot, though, is that all of us [cast and crew] are part of this story in some way because we are also opposed to what’s going on in Russia when we were living there. We know how those courts work; not all of us have been arrested, but I have been arrested for a few days, so I understand what cops are like in Russia. But again, it’s not enough to understand that to write about prison, you should know more about it. We went to Latvian prisons to find real prisoners, and actually, the extras in the prison cell with Sasha are real prisoners in Latvia. Most of them speak Russian, so they could improvise what they would actually be saying in a cell when there was background noise, and then we filmed just people on the street in another shot. So, we really tried to find places that look like St. Petersburg and capture that reality. But of course, if we were filming it in St. Petersburg, which is impossible because we would all be in jail, it would probably be easier because, wherever you look, it would just be real. However, recreating in Latvia worked out, and we didn’t make it look like a fake setup.
DEADLINE: You’ve won two BAFTA Student Awards, the New Yorker acquired your short, and now you’re on the 2026 Oscars shortlist. What would you like people to consider when watching this?
MOLOCHNIKOV: I think you should ask yourself what would you do if you’re in a situation where you have to make a difficult choice: do I stand with my beliefs and risk my freedom, or do I just bend under the pressure of the system? As a Russian living in the U.S., it’s hard to believe, but there was a very free society before the war, of course there were lots of repressions [under the] Putin [regime] but nothing compared to what’s going on right now. There was very free-minded theater that I was happily doing. And then one day, everything got very different. I think that’s very important that people be prepared to make difficult choices because they might come sooner than you think.
And of course, very small amount of us can act heroically like Sasha, but I think we should look at her and really value people like her that are stronger and braver than us and look at them as they’re standing on top of a mountain and just think, “Wow, OK, they did that, so what would I do?” Maybe in a smaller situation, I feel like our heroes inspire us.
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]
Watch Extremist on the New Yorker
English (US) ·